Sunday, August 9th, 2009...6:36 pm

#140: Do Not Listen To Your Sorry-Ass Old Music

I just got home from a six hour car ride with my daughter, which took place approximately thirteen hours after we ran out of things to say to each other — or at least after she ran out of things to say to me. Having reached the end of other entertainment strategies, she turned in desperation to my ipod, on which the most exciting number (note to self: number, what Ed Sullivan used to call a song, is a really old term) is The Rolling Stones’ Waiting on a Friend.

When my daughter threatened to jump out the window of the speeding car, I hit on the idea of letting her download new songs for me, and in the process give me a musical education.

If you love The Stones, she told me, you might like The Virgins:

Some other ideas for those of you who might want to renovate your playlists:

Getting the names of new bands wrong is Acting Old. It’s MGMT not “The Management” and the Ting TingS not “The Ting Ting”. And that Diana Ross and Nelly Furtado comparison is just poor. Diana would bitchslap you for saying that.

Oh come on, those younger bands/artists are pale, weak, toothless imitations of their predecessors. Why waste time listening to tired, derivative new stuff when the old stuff is such better quality? And this is coming from a 20-something over here!

sure, why listen to the original when you can listen to some derivative, unoriginal, less-talented hack who doesn’t have the wit to invent a style, but instead apes someone else’s genius.

That’s like preferring an Elvis imitator to the real thing.

Besides which, you’re completely wrong. I’m in my mid-20s, and everyone I know prefers the originals you mentioned to the supposed “superior” new version, and always have. YOU should be schooling your daughter as to the provenance of what she’s listening to, not the other way around. That’s how you learn to appreciate and critique music intelligently, by learning what built upon what to synergize the final product. In fact, a lot of my friends were (and still are) into “roots” music, old blues all the way to big band and trad jazz and trad fold, etc.

Listening to new bands merely as an affectation is as pathetic as women in their 40s-50s who try to dress like teenagers. A lot of your advice is like this. Being “old” has nothing to do with what you listen to or what movies you watch or the terms you use.

Until you learn what really makes you young and vibrant at heart, you’re setting yourself up to be very unhappy. I realize your book is supposed to be satire, but you seem to really believe you’re dispensing wisdom, and looking at these comments people are actually following your hare-brained advice.

It’s fine to expand your musical library with bands in the same genre as those you already like (ELO, Cheap Trick, Klaatu and Raspberries all riffed off the Beatles and made great music in their own right), but some of these people you are suggesting are pale imitations, direct rip-offs or vastly inferior talents to those you deride.

Lastly, expanding your library just for the sake of seeming “hip” (I’m sure that term makes me appear old) is a sad affectation. I don’t advocate listening to the same 100 songs day in and day out on the oldies station, but I’d go further into the past for edification before I’d make a virtue of music just because the people who play it are younger.

I’m a college professor and I supervise grad students. Whenever I walk into the lab THEY are playing “My Sorry-Ass Old Music”. So does my college senior son. THEY realize that what’s on the charts today is assembled by executives in a studio from spare clips found on the cutting room floor and is pretty much crap.

Took my high-school sophomore daughter and the visiting French exchange student to see DMB because the later wanted to see an American rock concert. My daughter has seen plenty of live concerts on TV but has never been to an actual live concert.

She’s an excellent cello player and knows when someone can play an instrument and when they can’t. In the middle of the first “number” she leaned over and said in a shocked voice “they don’t stink live”. She’d realized today that most of the people on the charts today can’t actually play their own music in one take and was surprised that someone could.

Since everybody seems to be taking this “directive” kind of hard, maybe I need to clarify that I don’t consider any of these “old” bands genuinely “sorry-ass” nor do I truly prefer Nelly to Diana or The Virgins to The Stones nor believe the new bands are superior musicians or any of that.

This blog and the book are meant to be social satire, to pick apart some of the ways some people see the difference between the older and the younger generation (for more hard research on that, look for tomorrow’s post), and to gently offer some insight into some of the things some younger people like that older people might not be aware of.

In case you were tempted to, you know, take this waaaaaay too seriously.

My children don’t like the music in the car, they can grow up and buy and insure one of their own – then they can pick the music! Same goes for the ipod – isn’t the whole point not having to listen to other people’s music? How’s that for acting old? The Mrs. gave in and puts on stuff they like when I’m not in the car with them, but I haven’t and I haven’t heard any blowback about it either – you either set boundaries and hold your ground or you don’t.

BTW, the older one likes Lucinda Williams, but does not seem to care for Tower of Power. Taste is a very personal thing. No telling with the younger one…

“Oh come on, those younger bands/artists are pale, weak, toothless imitations of their predecessors. Why waste time listening to tired, derivative new stuff when the old stuff is such better quality? And this is coming from a 20-something over here!”

Could not say it better myself. OBJECTIVELY, most ‘new’ music truly does suck. Pretending that it doesn’t, in a vain attempt to be ‘in’, in no way makes you ‘young’.You can’t become less old by pandering to the cult of youth, for one simple reason.

You ARE old. As am I and millions more besides. Accept it. it happens to EVERYONE. Listening to ‘bad’ music won’t help.

I love Cat Power, but both her and Justin Timberlake have been active for what, 15 years?

You honestly think that trading in a 30 year old act for a 15 year old act makes you young and hip? Do you even know a teenager, or have you just seen pictures or something?

Gee, what’s your next tip I can use to Not Act Old? Installation instructions for the hot new Microsoft Windows 95 (that’s Microsoft spelled as one word, not two, like Micro Soft, only clueless oldsters try to spell it as two words)? Have any opinions on the O.J. trial? What do you think of the release of the Nintendo 64, will it change leisure time as we know it forever?

Hey, I’m 50 years old and have a great appreciation for the music of my youth. I got to tell you though, there really is a lot of new music that’s out there that’s truly wonderful. Over the last few years my wife and I have fallen in love with releases by Wilco, the National, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Burial, Radiohead (of course!) and many others. There’s nothing wrong with listening to the stuff that you grew up with but don’t limit yourself, there’s great stuff getting recorded all the time!

“to pick apart some of the ways some people see the difference between the older and the younger generation”

Some people, huh? You are the one projecting here, I believe these “suggestions” are the way _you_ differentiate between old and young.

In the 60’s, maybe it was valid that parents listened to Sinatra and the youngsters listened to the British Invasion, but it’s just not that simple anymore.

Actually, you are kind of lazily using the shorthand that’s been around for centuries- old people like stuff from their youth and young people like stuff from their youth. But there is so much cross-over now that your “satire” really has no resonance because it’s not valid. I see menopausal men in convertibles listening to Nelly and teenage headbangers listening to hair-bands from the 80’s.

The trope about old people not knowing what voicemail is or being computer illiterate doesn’t really ring true anymore either. It’s like your book is a decade or more out of date.

Maybe _you’re_ just getting old and don’t actually know what differentiates the generations anymore?

There are 50 somethings Twittering and all over Facebook while the kids are abandoning social networking because it’s becoming (actually, always was) passe.

Try harder, is all I’m saying. Your points don’t work, even as satire, because they aren’t valid or true.

My 15 year old daughter recently dragged me and the rest of the family to see Styx, REO Speedwagon and .38 Special. (She wanted to go for the Styx because she recently discovered them and has been really enjoying them).

She’s totally into Queen, Clapton, Jimi, Derek and the Dominos, Pink Floyd, The Who, and I can go on and on. Meanwhile, she’s also into a lot of new bands too.

But for my birthday this summer, she bought tickets to take me to see Bob Dylan. I’m not the Bob Dylan fan. She is. I enjoyed watching Dylan as well as Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp who opened as did she.

I also just drove her and two of her girlfriends out for pizza and on the drive, I listened to all three of them singing the words to all sorts of “classics” from the 60’s and 70’s.

I chuckled. These girls will not think you’re hip if you don’t listen to “Dad’s Sorry-Ass Old Music”. I’m serious. They ridiculed some of their classmates who didn’t see the value in this great old music as being “clueless and having no musical taste!”

So Pamela, by pairing up Elvis with Justin Timberlake, I think I understand. You are apparently sooooo far gone into the cluelessly uncool department that you’re having to struggle to be relevant and you think that you have to try to “not act old”.

Sorry, but being “old” and being “cool” are not mutually exclusive options. In fact, kids today who have a clue realize that “old” and “cool” actually go together very well.

Don’t be afraid to age gracefully and with style. If you appear to be insecure about it, and keep trying to pretend to be young, you will embarrass your kids and they will not want to hang out with you.

The important thing is to be open to new experiences. You’ll find great music in any era and in any country. A 60s hippy who only listens to the music of his era is as pathetic and lacking in musical appreciation as kids today who think it’s uncool to listen to anything outside their own generation or genre.

I agree with some of the other posters — I have long said that the only “new” music that’s out these days that *doesn’t* suck makes no secret of its burning desire to sound like “old” music from the ’60s, ’70s, and even ’80s.

My daughter has grown up listening to everything from Vivaldi to Glenn Miller to Talking Heads in our house. She comes home from school dances saying the music was ok to dance to, but otherwise terrible. The girls on the soccer team I coach sometimes start singing Journey for no apparent reason. I haven’t told them how much I dislike Journey, but it’s funny to hear them singing songs that came out when I was in HS. They also dance to rap and hip hop (DDR). I think you should keep what you like from your youth (and previous generations) and add new music as you discover it. There’s good new stuff out there, but it’s not easy to find since radio has gotten so bad.

Well, Pamela, you certainly ignited a discussion with this post 4 years ago! I think it was a good suggestion to keep yourself exposed to new music, and I am adding it to my iPod all the time, but only when it is actually good. Starbucks download cards are a great source of indie rock. A Pandora radio station can introduce you to new music that you then think is good enough to buy — my Mumford & Sons station has done that. But I gotta say, my twenties daughter steals from my iTunes library all the time when I’m adding more to my classic rock playlist and says she loves having a mom with great taste in music.

As a very long time music lover…i saw the Beatles in 1964…I think a lot of the comments about the quality of newer music is correct. But I still listen to JT and groups like f.u.n because their sound makes me feel younger….say yes to dub-step and trance out a little!..Only old people demand each song/artist be perfect or amazing…the energy in the music grows on you the more you listen to it!

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